My People And Other Crime Stories - Liza Cody

Liza Cody is one of a particular group of crime writers whom I admired long before I met any of them. This group (other members included Andrew Taylor, Frances Fyfield, Ann Cleeves, Peter Robinson, and Ian Rankin) wrote varied types of mystery fiction but they had something in common: they were young British authors who published debuts in the genre during the 1980s which struck me as appealing and exerted some influence on my own thinking and writing while I was working on the first Harry Devlin novel. There were older writers who influenced me as well, of course, but this was a group of people of my generation, more or less, who were setting a high standard. 

Looking back, I think that, whatever other mistakes I've made in my writing career, I chose my unwitting mentors well. It's been a great joy to me to meet many of the authors I admired back in the 1980s and still to be able to count quite a lot of them as friends. Of the people I've mentioned, Liza was the first to be published and to make a big impact. Although her first series focused on Anna Lee, a female private eye, and Harry Devlin was - and is! - a  male lawyer, I tried to learn from her style of writing. She never wastes words, but she is strong on insight and dares to be a bit different, qualities I relish. 

When I wrote my very first Harry Devlin short story and submitted it for an anthology Liza was co-editing, she turned it down, but with comments that I found thought-provoking and which meant that I not only published it elsewhere, but also felt moved to write several more short stories about Harry. Many years later, I was thrilled when she wrote a story connected with Anna Lee at my request for a CWA anthology.

That story, 'Day or Night', appears in Liza's new book, My People and other Crime Stories, published by Gatekeeper Press. So does another story that she wrote for a book I edited, the excellent 'Ghost Station'. The collection begins with a foreword - nicely titled a 'foreword of warning' - which is as worth reading and as insightful as all her work. She discusses the 'toxic environment' in which authors are working at present and the dangers of online bullying and the thought police. Her concern is that 'the fight against bigotry seems itself to have engendered bigotry.'   

Liza's range and originality is on display in this collection, with intriguing stories ranging 'A Hand' to 'I Am Not Fluffy'. In an afterword, 'Notes from an Untidy Desk', she makes kind mention of me as well as other editors, but I've said enough to explain why regardless of that, as a long-term fan, I'm always keen to read her work. Her individualism is a great strength and anyone who likes interesting crime writing that, every now and then, gives you pause for thought as well as a chance to listen to fresh and sometimes challenging voices, will find as much to savour in this book as in her novels.

 

Motives for Murder

On Thursday evening I had the pleasure of presiding over an unforgettable evening at the Dorchester Hotel. It was the Detection Club's November dinner, which proved to be a sell-out, with a speech from distinguished former crime fiction editor Hilary Hale and the induction of two new members - James Runcie and Mick Herron. Guests included visitors from the US and members of the family of Ronald Knox, one of the Club's founders.

We also celebrated the recent 80th birthday of that wonderful writer Peter Lovesey, who has been a member of the Club for over 40 years. I admired Peter's books long before I met him, more than a quarter of a century ago, and when I suggested to Club members that we celebrate him in a practical way by producing a book in his honour, the response was overwhelmingly positive. And the result has just been published - a book called Motives for Murder.

The UK edition, published by Sphere (front cover above), was presented to Peter by David Shelley, once my own editor (and now J K Rowling's!) and the man who first commissioned my Lake District series. The US edition, published by Crippen and Landru (front cover below), was presented to Peter by Doug Greene whose own contribution to the genre includes a splendid biography of John Dickson Carr.

Len Deighton has written a foreword to the book, and Peter himself has supplied a fascinating afterword, detailing his memories of his early years in the Detection Club. Ann Cleeves, Len Tyler, Kate Charles, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Susan Moody, Andrew Taylor and Liza Cody are among the galaxy of talented writers who have written brand new stories for the book - while Simon Brett contributed a sonnet. An added twist is that the stories (and the sonnet) are connected to Peter's life and work in one way or another. The result is one of the most satisfying anthologies I've been concerned with, and a fitting tribute to one of life's good guys (who treated us on Thursday night to a wonderful rendition of his witty poem about autopsies...) It was a truly memorable occasion.

Deadly Pleasures

I'm delighted to announce the publication this week of Deadly Pleasures, an anthology I've edited to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the Crime Writers' Association. The book is published by Severn House in hardback and trade paperback and will be available in the US as well as the UK.

Putting this book together has been a labour of love, since I've been lucky enough to receive a host of marvellous - and brand new - stories by some wonderful writers. Let me just pick a few at random to give you the idea. John Harvey has written a new Jack Kiley story, which deals with a tricky and highly topical social issue. Peter Robinson has supplied a fascinating story, based on a performance piece that he worked on last year along with the great folk singer Martin Carty. Liza Cody tells us a bit more about the fate of Anna Lee - or does she? Andrew Taylor, who just won (most deservedly) the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, has contributed a very enjoyable story and so has Peter Lovesey.

David Hewson, recent author of a novelisation of The Killing, has a story in the book, and so does Lindsey Davis, who offers a sort of companion piece to a story she wrote for Mysterious Pleasures, the Golden Jubilee volume I edited for the CWA a decade ago. The other contributors of brand new stories are: Ann Cleeves, Cath Staincliffe,Simon Brett, Claire McGowan, Alison Joseph, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Michael Ridpath, Charles Todd and Christopher Fowler. Oh, and me!

I'm enormously grateful to the contributors, and also to Peter James, who wrote the intro. Let me assure you they didn't write these stories for the money, they just wanted to support the CWA, which is marvellous. There's one story that has been published before. Margaret Yorke, a former CWA chair who contributed to Mysterious Pleasures and other CWA anthologies I've edited, died while the book was in preparation. I wanted to include something by her as a tribute to her, and her family kindly agreed. All in all, it's a book I'm proud to be associated with, and I'm confident crime fans everywhere will love the stories written by some of the best writers around.

DCI Banks - review of Aftermath, part 2

DCI Banks – Aftermath concluded last night and having had a look at other reviews, I’m a bit worried that I seem to be in something of a minority in having enjoyed the opener for this new series starring Stephen Tompkinson as Banks and Andrea Lowe as Annie Cabot. But despite widespread reservations about the portrayal of Banks as a bit of a wimp, I found the second and concluding episode fairly entertaining and a bit different from many TV cop shows.

However, there was a heavily melodramatic element to the material and its presentation, and here perhaps there were too many concessions in the script to the perceived requirements of a TV audience. I’ve read many of the Banks books, but not Aftermath, so I can’t comment with authority, but even so I’m confident the novel is a good deal subtler than the screenplay.

Of course, it is in the nature of TV adaptations that they lose something of the flavour of the original. If the writer is lucky – think Colin Dexter – they add a lot, too. But Liza Cody, Tim Heald and Marjorie Eccles are among those who arguably were not well served when their books made the transition to the small screen. And even Reg Hill had to endure Hale and Pace as the original Dalziel and Pascoe, before his work moved to the BBC.

John Harvey, in a rather scathing assessment of the first episode of Aftermath, mentioned that Tompkinson was once briefly considered for the role of Charlie Resnick. It’s also the case that he was mooted for a TV version of Harry Devlin, and a script of All the Lonely People was written by one of the scriptwriters for Taggart. Alas, it never got made. Would I have minded liberties being taken with my masterpiece? Believe me, I could have coped!!

Forgotten Book - Dupe

Liza Cody’s Dupe ought to be a controversial inclusion for Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Friday series. True, it’s almost thirty years since the book appeared, in 1980, but it won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best debut crime novel of the year, and it introduced us not only to a fine author, but also to a fine character, the private eye Anna Lee.

Anna is an appealing character: youthful, a bit frustrated, and currently bottom in the pecking order at Brierley Security, Private Investigations. When the bereaved parents of Deirdre Jackson approach Brierley Security, wanting to know more about the car crash that killed their daughter, it doesn’t seem like a great job, so naturally it goes to Anna. But as she investigates the down-at-heel film business in which Deirdre worked, she discovers that there was more to the death than met the eye. The title of the book, naturally, has a double meaning.

This was one of those books I read in the eighties, and from which I sought a bit of inspiration, when I was thinking about what it took to write a fresh new mystery series. I liked Cody’s crisp, economical style of writing, the plausible way in which Anna and her colleagues were depicted, and the evocative way in which she depicted Anna Lee’s London. These qualities are enduring strengths of her work, and it was no surprise when the Anna Lee series was adapted for television. With that excellent actor Imogen Stubbs in the title role, it should have been a winner. But somehow the mix didn’t work, and Liza seems to have become disillusioned with the Anna Lee series. It’s a long time since this appealing character last appeared.

Happily, Liza Cody continues to write novels and short stories (she also co-edited three volumes of the CWA anthology before I took over the editorship), although these appear less frequently than in the past. She is not by any means a forgotten author, and Dupe definitely should not be a forgotten book.